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Jan 13
2011
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A New Year's Inspiration from member Claire MolinardPosted by: Alan Seale on Jan 13, 2011 Tagged in: Untagged
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With her permission, I am sharing this new year's greeting from Claire Molinard, one of our members and a graduate of the Transformational Presence Coach Training program. Claire lives in France. Thank you, Claire, for this incredibly inspiring account of your New Year's Eve and Day.
I started 2011 on a Parisian peniche--a boat house--on the Seine. It's an old river cruise boat owned by l'Arme du Salut which was reconvereted two years ago into a shelter for homeless people on which this not-for-profit organization is running an extraordinary pilot project. We came--about 12 of us--after a 5-day meditation retreat, to cook and share a dinner with the 50 plus inhabitants of this boat and the social workers who work there full time. A wild mix of wrecked lives, exiled souls, from over 20 nationalities in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia...and from all parts of France. People whose lives once fell off the jagged edge, young and old, some physically or mentally sick--hopeful or depressed, all kinds of men and women who, somehow, were willing to share that night with us, rather than hide alone in their individual boat cabins.
It was wonderful to be there; to leave all that separates and differentiates us behind for a few hours and to share that time together--simply sharing our joy.
As I grow older, I realize more and more how relationships are key to being happy and fulfilled. In this coming year, I want to explore this subject deeper...How we communicate or not--with our close ones; how we carry difficult conversations at work or in daily interactions with people is eventually a reflection of how intimate we are with ourselves. How present and awake we are to what is going on with us at any given moment.
In the peniche on New Year's Eve, I was awake to the pain and suffering that was all around me. I wasn't denying it, judging it, or conceptualizing it. It was part of what was here and I was also present to my own pain and suffering. Yet the moment was much more than all the individual stories that had brought all of us on this boat. Being in the Now, it became possible to really SEE them and all of us as ONE. Concretely, this allows for real communication to occur, because the usual ME/YOU boundaries no longer exist; exchange and relationship can really flow and be natural.
May this New Year bring you all the shared joy and love you wish to have in your relationships with your loved ones.
Peace,
Claire









